Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900) was an American essayist and novelist. He worked with a surveying party in Missouri; studied law at the University of Pennsylvania; practiced in Chicago; was assistant editor (1860) and editor (1861-1867) of The Hartford Press, and after The Press was merged into The Hartford Courant, was co-editor with Joseph R Hawley; in 1884 he joined the editorial staff of Harper's Magazine, for which he conducted The Editors Drawer until 1892, when he took charge of The Editor's Study. He travelled widely, lectured frequently, and was actively interested in prison reform, city park supervision, and other movements for the public good. He was the first president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He first attracted attention by the reflective sketches entitled My Summer in a Garden (1870). Amongst his other works are Saunterings (1872), Backlog Studies (1873), Being a Boy (1878), In the Wilderness (1878), Captain John Smith (1881), Washington Irving (1881), A Little Journey in the World (1889), As We Were Saying (1891) and That Fortune (1899).

Comedy is how we cope with the absurdity of life. The person who cannot step back and see how ludicrous are most of the things we encounter in life is the person who gets mired and engulfed in them. Comedy lets us step back and see the whole picture. It reminds us of what is really important which certainly includes laughing and laughing often. These four comedies each take on several situations but exaggerate them until they become enlarged and laughable. To each are added an unusual use of standard theatrical tradition. A writer of one play becomes involved with his own characters. Another play actually moves backwards in time. Another comedy is actually two separate plays that come together while another claims to be a musical but has no singing whatsoever. Come along for the fun and laughter and lighten your burdens for a while.

The Mascarene islands in the southern Indian Ocean - Mauritius, Réunion and Rodrigues - were once home to an extraordinary range of birds and reptiles. Evolving on these isolated volcanic islands in the absence of mammalian predators or competitors, the land was dominated by giant tortoises, parrots, skinks and geckos, burrowing boas, flightless rails & herons, and of course (in Mauritius) the Dodo. Uninhabited and only discovered in the 1500s, colonisation by European settlers in the 1600s led to dramatic changes in the ecology of the islands; the birds and tortoises were slaughtered indiscriminately while introduced rats, cats, pigs and monkeys destroyed their eggs, the once-extensive forests logged, and invasive introduced plants from all over the tropics devastated the ecosystem. The now-familiar icon of extinction, the Dodo, was gone from Mauritius within 50 years of human settlement, and over the next 150 years many of the Mascarenes' other native vertebrates followed suit. The product of over 30 years research by Anthony Cheke, Lost Land of the Dodo provides a comprehensive yet hugely enjoyable account of the story of the islands' changing ecology, interspersed with human stories, the islands' biogeographical anomalies, and much else. Many French publications, old and new, especially for Réunion, are discussed and referenced in English for the first time. The book is richly illustrated with maps and contemporary illustrations of the animals and their environment, many of which have rarely been reprinted before. Illustrated box texts look in detail at each extinct vertebrate species, while Julian Hume's superb colour plates bring many of the extinct birds to life. Lost Land of the Dodo provides the definitive account of this tragic yet remarkable fauna, and is a must-read for anyone interested in islands, their ecology and the history of our relationship with the world around us.

What do dodos, Adolf Hitler and the small pox virus have in common? They’re all DEAD. But sometimes, unexpected things happen. When Kevin Smith, a money-minded auctioneer and Ned, his booze-loving, failed-writer dad are shipwrecked in the Indian Ocean, they have absolutely no idea of the series of weird incidents that are about to follow. • Dodos coming back to life. • A Greek god solving writer’s block issues. • Poop getting auctioned. …they just have no idea.

My beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining, and without breaking any part of its machinery or stopping. I had come to believe it infallible in its judgments about the time of day, and to consider its constitution and its anatomy imperishable. But at last, one night, I let it run down. I grieved about it as if it were a recognized messenger and forerunner of calamity. But by and by I cheered up, set the watch by guess, and commanded my bodings and superstitions to depart. Next day I stepped into the chief jeweler's to set it by the exact time, and the head of the establishment took it out of my hand and proceeded to set it for me. Then he said, "She is four minutes slow-regulator wants pushing up." I tried to stop him—tried to make him understand that the watch kept perfect time. But no; all this human cabbage could see was that the watch was four minutes slow, and the regulator must be pushed up a little; and so, while I danced around him in anguish, and implored him to let the watch alone, he calmly and cruelly did the shameful deed. My watch began to gain. It gained faster and faster day by day. Within the week it sickened to a raging fever, and its pulse went up to a hundred and fifty in the shade. At the end of two months it had left all the timepieces of the town far in the rear, and was a fraction over thirteen days ahead of the almanac. It was away into November enjoying the snow, while the October leaves were still turning. It hurried up house rent, bills payable, and such things, in such a ruinous way that I could not abide it. I took it to the watchmaker to be regulated. He asked me if I had ever had it repaired. I said no, it had never needed any repairing. He looked a look of vicious happiness and eagerly pried the watch open, and then put a small dice-box into his eye and peered into its machinery. He said it wanted cleaning and oiling, besides regulating—come in a week. After being cleaned and oiled, and regulated, my watch slowed down to that degree that it ticked like a tolling bell. I began to be left by trains...

James Edward Preston Muddock also known as "Joyce Emmerson Preston Muddock" and "Dick Donovan" (1843-1934) was a prolific British journalist and author of mystery and horror fiction. For a time his detective stories were as popular as those of Arthur Conan Doyle. Between 1889 and 1922 he published nearly 300 detective and mystery stories. At the age of 14 he travelled to India. By 1870 he had started publishing serial stories in English newspapers. During his journalistic career he travelled to China, the United States, and Australia. Most of Muddock's stories featured his continuing character Dick Donovan, the Glasgow Detective, named for one of the 18th Century Bow Street Runners. The character was so popular that later stories were published under this pen name. His non-fiction included four history books, seven guidebooks for areas in the Alps and his autobiography. His works include: The Star of Fortune: A Story of the Indian Mutiny (1895), Riddles Read (1896), The Sunless City (1905) and Scarlet Sinners (1910).

Anna Christie is a play in four acts, which won O'Neill the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Anna makes contact with the father she has not seen since her infancy, and he takes her on board his coal barge. There she falls in love with a man they rescue from a shipwreck, but trouble arises when she tells them she has been working as a prostitute.

Isaac Johnson (1844-1905) was a former African American slave. Born to a slave mother, his father was his mother's master. He, his mother and his 3 siblings were separated and sold. Isaac eventually escaped. He served in the Civil War, after which he moved to Canada, and worked as a mason and stonecutter. His life story, Slavery Days in Old Kentucky: A True Story of a Father Who Sold His Wife and Four Children, was published in 1901.

William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) was an English author. He produced a large body of work, consisting of essays, short fiction, and novels, spanning several overlapping genres including horror, fantastic fiction and science fiction. Early in his writing career he dedicated effort to poetry, although few of his poems were published during his lifetime. He also attracted some notice as a photographer and achieved some renown as a bodybuilder. He began a four-year apprenticeship as a cabin boy in 1891. In 1899, he opened W. H. Hodgsonas School of Physical Culture offering tailored exercise regimes for personal training. He wrote articles such as Physical Culture versus Recreative Exercises (1903). Hodgson turned his attention to fiction, publishing his first short story, The Goddess of Death (1904). In 1906 the American magazine The Monthly Story Magazine published From the Tideless Sea, the first of Hodgsonas Sargasso Sea stories. His first published novel, The Boats of the aGlen Carriga, appeared in 1907. Amongst his other works are The House on the Borderland (1908), The Ghost Pirates (1909), Carnacki: The Ghost Finder (1910) and The Night Land (1912).